Denying the importance of trends is a mistake -- to be the first can confer a competitive advantage for your firm and your reputation, and goes towards building your employer brand. Once new trends have evolved into current practices, they lose their effectiveness due to their wide spread and use by competitors.

This is a great place to start when looking at your overall video strategy and deciding what content to include and what stories to tell. Come up with three key messages for potential customers to absorb, and then work on simplifying them. Get someone to view your businesses from an outsider's perspective, which can add additional insight.

You've finally decided to hire a production company, or to film your own video blogs to market your business.
The idea of putting yourself "out there" might be terrifying, but it doesn't have to be. Working with the right crew or doing some trial runs on your own can make all the difference. Here are four tips to ensure you look your best when in the spotlight.

The San Francisco based startup Secret (that was founded by two former Google and Square employees) is getting tons of attention, followers and fans. In short, you can write anything that's on your mind, add photos or colors to the background and customize this content while being able to share it, free of judgment, and without attaching any of your personal information or profile to it.

Viral video material can pop up at any time, and there are now a ton of apps on the market that can make mobile recording that much easier and higher quality. There are a few apps in particular like Camera MX, that allow you to combine effects and photo frames to get more creative with your camera.

There are various methods in which content marketing can work for businesses in virtually any industry, with the information provided in a variety of formats. You can either do this in-house, or hire professional content creators in a variety of mediums to do this for you. Here are some ideas that could work for you.

A recent study by Nielsen shows that advertisers, big and small, are turning to the Internet to push their brands. Though many respondents said they still plan to use online advertising for direct response, more and more are spending money on digital brand advertising to promote their company, product or service.

Is it any surprise that flashy headlines and fake celebrity death memes on Twitter get so much attention? In this era of digital narcissism, where our gateway to content is through the lens of the people we like and admire most, traditional and digital publishers must now grasp for attention in an even flashier way.

The true humility and humiliation of social media is not what the web analytics tell us: it's what the audience does (or doesn't do) with the content. You can buy audience, links, and clicks, but you can't buy people who care and want to share whatever it is that you are doing.

I think creating a body of standards will only help to evolve and legitimize the industry. But some of my peers have argued that this sort of model makes it seem too much like the traditional TV or film industry or that web video still has a long way to go to bring in the views and big bucks the way traditional media has.